W. S. Churchill '' Consistency In Politics'' [ 1932]

CONSISTENCY IN POLITICS

N o one has written more boldly on this subject than
Emerson:

‘Why should you keep your head over your shoul¬
der? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you
contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public
place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then?..

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines . . .

‘Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow
speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict everything you said to-day.’

These are considerable assertions, and they may well stimu¬
late thought upon this well-worn topic. A distinction should
be drawn at the outset between two kinds of political incon¬
sistency. First, a Statesman in contact with the moving current
of events and anxious to keep the ship on an even keel and
steer a steady course may lean all his weight now on one side
and now on the other. His arguments in each case when con¬
trasted can be shown to be not only very different in character,
but contradictory in spirit and opposite in direction: yet his
object will throughout have remained the same. His resolves,
his wishes, his outlook may have been unchanged; his meth¬
ods may be verbally irreconcilable. We cannot call this incon¬
sistency. In fact it may be claimed to be the truest consistency.
The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing
circumstances is to change with them while preserving the
same dominating purpose. Lord Halifax on being derided as
a trimmer made the celebrated reply: ‘I trim as the temperate
zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted and
the climate in which they are frozen.’

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CONSISTENCY IN POLITICS

No greater example in this field can be found than Burke.
His Thoughts on the Present Discontents, his writings and
speeches on the conciliation of America, form the main and
lasting armoury of Liberal opinion throughout the English-
speaking world. His Letters on a Regicide Peace, and Reflec¬
tions on the French Revolution, will continue to furnish Con¬
servatives for all time with the most formidable array of op¬
posing weapons. On the one hand he is revealed as a foremost
apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion
of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied
to this great life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily
discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the
imm ense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked
from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely
contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny,
whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch
and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether,
mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it tow¬
ered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and
wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the
Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same
man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society
and Government, and defending them from assaults, now
from one extreme, now from the other. The same danger
approached the same man from different directions and in
different forms, and the same man turned to face it with in¬
comparable weapons, drawn from the same armoury, used
in a different quarter, but for the same purpose.

It is inevitable that frequent changes should take place in
the region of action. A policy is pursued up to a certain point;
it becomes evident at last that it can be carried no further.
New facts arise which clearly render it obsolete; new difficul¬
ties, which make it impracticable. A new and possibly the op¬
posite solution presents itself with overwhelming force. To
abandon the old policy is often necessarily to adopt the new.
It sometimes happens that the same men, the same Govern¬
ment, the same Party have to execute this volte face. It may

23

B

THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES

be their duty to do so because it is the sole manner of dis¬
charging their responsibilities, or because they are the only
combination strong enough to do what is needed in the new
circumstances. In such a case the inconsistency is not merely
verbal, but actual, and ought to be boldly avowed. In place
of arguments for coercion, there must be arguments for con¬
ciliation; and these must come from the same lips as the
former. But all this may be capable of reasonable and honour¬
able explanation. Statesmen may say bluntly, ‘We have failed
to coerce; we have now to conciliate,’ or alternatively, ‘We
have failed to conciliate; we have now to coerce.’

Ireland with its mysterious and sinister influence has been
responsible for many changes of this kind in British politics.
We see Mr. Gladstone in 1886 after five years of coercion,
after the fiercest denunciation of Irish Nationalists ‘marching
through rapine to the disintegration of the Empire,’ turn in a
month to those policies of reconciliation to which the rest of
his life was devoted. Mr. Gladstone in his majestic and saintly
manner gave many comforting and convincing reasons for
his change, and there is no doubt that his whole nature was
uplifted and inspired by his new departure. But behind all the
eloquence and high-sounding declamation there was a very
practical reason for his change, which in private at any rate
he did not conceal.

During the interval between the fall of his Government in
1885 and his resumption of power in 1886, a Conservative
Government held office with the support of the Irish vote, and
the people—wrongly no doubt but sincerely—thought the
Conservatives were themselves meditating a solution of the
Irish problem on Home Rule lines. Confronted with this sup¬
posed fact he felt it impossible for the Liberal Party to march
further along the path of coercion and a denial of Irish claims.
But Mr. Gladstone was wrong in his judgment of the impen¬
ding Conservative action. The Conservative Party would
never at that stage have been capable of a Home Rule policy.
They might have coquetted with the Irish vote as a manoeuvre
in their fierce political battle with the Liberals; but any deci-

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CONSISTENCY IN POLITICS

ded advance towards Home Rule would have split them from
end to end, dethroned their leaders in such a course, and de¬
stroyed the power of the Party as a governing instrument. Mr.
Gladstone gave to his opponents through this miscalculation
what was virtually a twenty years’ reign of power. Neverthe¬
less the judgment of history will probably declare that Mr.
Gladstone was right both in his resistance to Home Rule up
to a certain point and in his espousal of it thereafter. Certainly
the change which he made upon this question in 1886, for
which he was so much condemned, was in every way a lesser
change than that which was made by the whole Conserva¬
tive Party on this same question thirty-five years later in 1921.

Apart from action in the march of events, there is an in¬
consistency arising from a change o^nood or heart. t Le cceur
a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas' Few men avoid such
changes in their lives, and few public men have been able to
conceal them. Usually youth is for freedom and reform, ma¬
turity for judicious compromise, and old age for stability and
repose. The normal progression is from Left to Right, and
often from extreme Left to extreme Right. Mr. Gladstone’s
progress was by a striking exception in the opposite direction.
In the immense period covered by his life he moved steadily
and irresistibly from being ‘the rising hope of stem unben¬
ding Tories’ to become the greatest Liberal statesman of the
nineteenth century. Enormous was the change of mood which
this august transition represented. From the young Member
of Parliament whose speech against the abolition of slavery
attracted the attention of the House of Commons in 1833,
from the famous Minister who supported the Confederate
States against the North in the sixties, to the fiery orator who
pleaded the cause of Bulgarian independence in the eighties,
and the veteran Premier, the last scraps of whose matchless
strength were freely offered in the nineties to the cause of Irish
self-government—it was a transit almost astronomical in its
scale.

It were a thankless theme to examine how far ambition to
lead played its unconscious but unceasing part in such an

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THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES

evolution. Ideas acquire a momentum of their own. The
stimulus of a vast concentration of public support is almost
irresistible in its potency. The resentments engendered by the
warfare of opponents, the practical responsibilities of a Party
Leader—all take a hand. And in the main great numbers are
at least an explanation for great changes. ‘I have always
marched,’ said Napoleon, ‘with the opinion of four or five
millions of men.’ To which, without risking the reproach of
cynicism, we may add two other sayings: ‘In a democratic
country possessing representative institutions it is occasion¬
ally necessary to defer to the opinions of other people’; and,
T am their leader; I must follow them.’ The integrity of Mr.
Gladstone’s career is redeemed by the fact that these two last
considerations played a far smaller part in his life than in
those of many lesser public men whose consistency has never
been impugned.

It is evident that a political leader responsible for the direc¬
tion of affairs must, even if unchanging in heart or objective,
give his counsel now on the one side and now on the other of
many public issues. Take for instance the strength and ex¬
pense of the armed forces of a country in any particular
period. This depends upon no absolute or natural law. It re¬
lates simply to the circumstances of the time and to the view
that a man may hold of the probability of dangers, actual or
potential, which threaten his country. Would there, for in¬
stance, be any inconsistency in a British Minister urging the
most extreme and rapid naval preparations in the years pre¬
ceding the outbreak of the Great War with Germany, and
advocating a modest establishment and strict retrenchment
in the years following the destruction of the German naval
power? He might think that the danger had passed and had
carried away with it the need for intense preparation. He
might believe that a long period of peace would follow the
exhaustion of the World War, and that financial and economic
recovery were more necessary to the country than continuous
armed strength. He might think that the Air was taking the
place of the Sea in military matters. And he might be right

26

CONSISTENCY IN POLITICS

and truly consistent both in the former and in the latter ad¬
vocacy. But it would be easy to show a wide discrepancy be¬
tween the sets of arguments in the two periods. Questions of
this kind do not depend upon the intrinsic logic of the reason¬
ing used on the one hand or the other, but on taking a just
view of the governing facts of different periods. Such changes
must, however, be considered in each particular case with re¬
gard to the personal situation of the individual. If it can be
shown that he swims with the current in both cases, his titles
to a true consistency must be more studiously examined than
if he swims against it.

A more searching scrutiny should also be applied to
changes of view in relation not to events but to systems of
thought and doctrine. In modem British politics no greater
contrast can be found than in comparing the Free Trade
speeches of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain as President of
the Board of Trade in the early eighties, with the Protectionist
speeches which he delivered during the Tariff campaign at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Here we are dealing not
with the turbulent flow of events, but with precise methods of
thought. Those who read Mr. Chamberlain’s Free Trade
speeches will find that almost every economic argument which
he used in 1904 was foreseen and countered by him in 1884.
Yet the sincerity of his later views was generally accepted by
friends and opponents alike. And after all, once he had come
to think differently on economic subjects, was it not better that
he should unhesitatingly give his country the benefit of his
altered convictions? Still, it must be observed that the basis
of reasoning had changed very little in the twenty years’ inter¬
val, that the problem was mainly an abstract one in its charac¬
ter, and that it was substantially the same problem. There
need be no impeachment of honesty of purpose or of a zeal¬
ous and unceasing care for the public interest. But there is
clearly in this case a contradiction of argument in regard to
the same theory which amounts to self-stultification.

We may illustrate this distinction further. Mr. Chamber-
lain argued in 1884 that a tax on imports was paid by the

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THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES

home consumer, and in 1904 that it was paid, very largely at
any rate, by the foreigner. We cannot help feeling that the
reasoning processes underlying these two conclusions are
fundamentally incompatible, and it is hard to understand how
a man who once saw the one process so clearly should subse¬
quently have visualized and accepted the opposite process
with equal vehemence and precision. It would have been bet¬
ter, tactically at any rate, for Mr. Chamberlain to have relin¬
quished the abstract argument altogether and to have relied
exclusively in his advocacy upon the facts—the world facts—
which were really his reasons, the importance of consolidating
the British Empire by means of a Zollverein, and the necessity
of rallying support for that policy among the British industrial
interests and the Conservative working classes; for these con¬
siderations, in his view, over-ruled—whether or not they contra¬
dicted—the validity of his purely economic conviction.

A Statesman should always try to do what he believes is
best in the long view for his country, and he should not be
dissuaded from so acting by having to divorce himself from
a great body of doctrine to which he formerly sincerely
adhered. Those, however, who are forced to these gloomy
choices must regard their situation in this respect as unlucky.
The great Sir Robert Peel must certainly be looked on as
falling within the sweep of this shadow. Of him Lord John
Russell sourly observed:

*He has twice changed his opinion on the greatest political ques¬
tion of his day. Once when the Protestant Church was to be
defended and the Protestant Constitution rescued from the attacks
of the Roman Catholics, which it was said would ruin it, the Right
Honourable Gentleman undertook to lead the defence. Again, the
Com Laws were powerfully attacked in this House and out of it.
He took the lead of his Party to resist a change and to defend Pro¬
tection. I think, on both occasions, he has come to a wise conclu¬
sion, and to a decision most beneficial to his country; first, when
he repealed the Roman Catholic disabilities, and, secondly, when
he abolished Protection. But that those who followed him—men
that had committed themselves to these questions, on the faith of

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CONSISTENCY IN POLITICS

his political wisdom, on the faith of his sagacity, led by the great
eloquence and ability he displayed in debate—that when they
found he had changed his opinions and proposed measures dif¬
ferent from those on the faith of which they had followed him—
that they should exhibit warmth and resentment was not only
natural, but I should have been surprised if they had not displayed
it.’

This was a hard, yet not unjust, commentary upon the car¬
eer of one of the most eminent and one of the noblest of our
public men; for here not merely a change of view is in ques¬
tion, but the workaday good faith of a leader towards those
who had depended upon his guidance and had not shared in
his conversion.

A change of Party is usually considered a much more seri¬
ous breach of consistency than a change of view. In fact as
long as a man works with a Party he will rarely find himself
accused of inconsistency, no matter how widely his opinions
at one time on any subject can be shown to have altered. Yet
Parties are subject to changes and inconsistencies not less
glaring than those of individuals. How should it be otherwise
in the fierce swirl of Parliamentary conflict and Electoral for¬
tune? Change with a Party, however inconsistent, is at least
defended by the power of numbers. To remain constant when
a Party changes is to excite invidious challenge. Moreover, a
separation from Party affects all manner of personal relations
and sunders old comradeship. Still, a sincere conviction, in
harmony with the needs of the time and upon a great issue,
will be found to override all other factors; and it is right and
in the public interest that it should. Politics is a generous pro¬
fession. The motives and characters of public men, though
constantly criticized, are in the end broadly and fairly judged.
But, anyhow, where is Consistency to-day? The greatest Con¬
servative majority any modem Parliament has seen is led by
the creator of the Socialist party, and dutifully cheers the very
Statesman who a few years ago was one of the leaders of a
General Strike which he only last year tried to make again
legal. A life-long Free Trader at the Board of Trade has

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THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES

framed and passed amid the loudest plaudits a whole-hearted
Protectionist Tariff. The Government which only yesterday
took office to keep the £ sterling from falling, is now sup¬
ported for its exertions to keep it from rising. These astonish¬
ing tergiversations could be multiplied: but they suffice. Let
us quote the charitable lines of Crabbe, in the hopes of a
similar measure of indulgence:

‘Minutely trace man’s life; year after year.

Through all his days let all his deeds appear.

And then, though some may in that life be strange.

Yet there appears no vast nor sudden change;

The links that bind those various deeds are seen.

And no mysterious void is left between.’

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